Home and DIY: six cards for the jobs you have been putting off

Hardware and homeware are bought in bursts. You go months without needing anything, then a job appears and you spend a hundred dollars in an afternoon. That shape suits a rewards balance better than almost anything else on the wall.

What is on the wall

• Hardware — Home Depot, Lowe's
• Furniture — IKEA, Wayfair
• Craft and hobby — Michaels
• Rural and outdoor — Tractor Supply

Let it build to the cap

$100 is the maximum for a single card, and in this category that is a genuinely useful amount: a power tool, a piece of flat-pack furniture, the materials for a small job. A $5 hardware card buys a packet of screws.

Nothing stops you cashing out twice. If a job needs more than a hundred, two cards spend as easily as one at the same till.

Home Depot or Lowe's

Functionally interchangeable for most purchases. Pick whichever is closer, or whichever has the item in stock — both let you check store inventory online before you commit a card to one of them.

The two people overlook

Michaels is craft supplies, and it is the card to think of around Christmas and birthdays rather than for a home job — wrapping, framing, decorations and materials. Tractor Supply is livestock feed, fencing, workwear and outdoor equipment, which is invisible to most members and essential to a few.

Timing it

Both hardware chains run seasonal sales — spring garden, autumn tools, the holiday period. A gift card does not expire, so building a balance now and spending it into a sale is straightforwardly worth more than spending it today.